We spend a few weeks in the North of Thailand. It was not completely the way we’d expected. Because of my ear infections and Janske’s blather infection we were on antibiotics and couldn’t even celebrate properly that we saw each other again after 10 months. Actually, the first thing we did when we saw each other was going to the hospital because my ears hurt so much that I couldn’t even think straight. After that we saw the hospitals of every place we visited because we needed to do checkups. It became a ritual to arrive in a city, check in at a guesthouse and find out where the hospital was.
We didn’t like Chiang Mai the way we expected, it was very touristy. But with bikes we explored the city and that was nice. And don't forget, we're friends all the world!
We loved the motorbike trip to Pai, very beautiful to drive thru the thick jungle, singing songs together, hours of bier en tieten lalalala. Very meditative.
But also Pai wasn’t really what we hoped for. Driving into the town we saw weird big buildings and huge letter signs saying ‘Welcome to Pai!’. We felt like we were driving into a theme park. And Pai itself seemed to be set up for tourists. There are lovely bars and it was nice to drink a chai with Loesjes friend from Art in Chai, but you could see that Pai had changed a lot over the last few years. We got the chance to see Job2Do again at a reggae party, this one was nicer than in Chiang Mai. Although Pai seemed to be too touristy or too much of a hippie place, we stayed at a guesthouse with the sweetest Thai women. She did not speak a word of English, but with a lot of smiles and hand gestures we managed to communicate somehow about the cat, the room and a huge fruit that was hanging on one of the trees. We adopted the cat and called him Herman. He was always there in front of our door and entertained us by throwing gecko’s thru the air and catching them with his mouth before swallowing them completely. Yikes! The surroundings of Pai are very beautiful, so we loved driving around on the motorbike. We went to a waterfall where on the way tiny women offer you Marihuana. This part is suddenly very poor with wooden little simple houses and dirty children playing everywhere. That’s a big contrast with the center of Pai now, although 10 years ago it was also a sleepy little town with only 3 guesthouses. It’s incredible how fast things can change. On the road to the waterfall a strange older man joined us who didn’t stop talking which was at times a bit too much for the state we were in… And then at the waterfall there was a boy standing on a rock looking at the waterfall in some kind of trance without responding to anything around him. After a while we got really worried but then he suddenly moved and gave us a smile.
After driving back from Pai we moved to Chiang Rai where we went to the Sunday market that we LOVED!! Chiang Rai was so refreshingly real and full of Thai people. We tried all kind of food with as highlight cockroaches and larvae. What was in one word DISGUSTING… Never ever eating that again. But well, you only live once and have to try things, don’t you think?
After a while we ended up at a square where older people were doing some weird fitness: walking around in a big circle with a stage and music. Unfortunately we weren’t invited to join them…
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